Non-Koreans (Survey).... how did you learn about K-pop?

[koganbot]

While searching "Oscar song meanings," I incidentally found this thread where non-Koreans talk about how they discovered K-pop and why they love it.

"I'm just wondering...... I see many people who aren't Korean listening to Kpop.

"How did you find out and learn about kpop?
"Why do you love it?
"What is your ethnicity/nationality?
"What are your favorite groups and why? What are your favorite songs and why?"
"Do you prefer boy groups over girl groups or both?"

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120412182534AAbtXrF

I don't think nationality matters at all because puppies of all countries listen to kpop. A norwegian puppy or a belizean puppy - they all love it! I'm central european, now living in Phnom Penh where local khmer kids dance to kpop in parks. Few nights ago they were swaying their hips to Abracadabra :D

Three people like that the groups don't have to sing about sex, money, and drugs.

I think this is my favorite bit of meta:

At first when I listened to [SNSD's] music, I didn't like it and I sorta became an anti. (I think that to like a group you have to be a bit negative to see if you prefer them. If their music and personality can persuade you then they are a good group. A group must be able to have strong persuasion to have fans)

Best food reference (in regard to Onew of SHINee):

Onew- he's adorable, he's sweet, he's kind of awkward, he loves chicken (and I do too), and his voice is amazing; though he's quiet, he's a good leader.

Most emblematic authenticity argument:

What are MY favourite groups and why?

Well .... I love mostly YG's lol. BigBang&2NE1. 2NE1, because i just love their music that they sing. I mean it's just so beautiful, and has a good feeling, it gets my emotions inside. That song ugly. It really got to me how they're calling themselves ugly. When everyone is unique, and pretty in the inside. I think their song just like gives a message to the people who think they are ugly. 2NE1 i think is just amazing, they don't care about anything. Especially Dara's hair, does she care that everyone thinks her hair is crazy no? I just love it how they all got their style, and just care about their own opinions. I love it how their different from other bands. I mean do other bands have the guts to call themselves ugly in a song? Narhh they don't! 2ne1 sings sad songs, and even their hyper songs have some feeling and emotion init for some reason !

BigBang, GOSH where do i start. Well most of the reasons are in 2NE1, some of them are not very attractive. But they don't care too, do they lolz. Bigbang's music is just A-MAZIN-G! I love their new album Alive. I like Fantastic Baby, the most yes because it's hyper. But through all the drama they went through, this is like the song that just says to me ' WOW BIGBANG IS BACK!'. With all the drama, u wud think BigBang's party-songs are gone. I love BLUE though, its like a starting-new fresh song if you get me. Like the songs 'i'm sing my bluee-oo' the songs feeling just makes me think their syaing bye to the drama and starting fresh and stuff like that. Bad Boy was like wow. I didn't understand the meaning of it, but it was a good song. What i like the most about them both is that they only got a few members! I can easily remember the members now. Bigbang - 5Members (TAEYANG, T.O.P, G-DRAGON, DAESUNG, SEUNGRI) 2NE1 - 4Members (PARK BOM, SANDARA PARK, MINZY, CL)

Anyone reading this can answer in the comments, if you'd like, even if you are Korean. How does one define "Non-Korean" anyway? I'd say that I'm non-Ukrainian, non-Belarussian, non-Russian, non-Polish, non-Austrian, nonshtetl, non-European, non-Yiddish, etc., though I could claim all those ethnicities (or whatever) under certain circumstances. By the way, the first-released (though unauthorized) version of "Tell Me Your Wish (Genie)" was not by SNSD but by an Uzbek. Not that Uzbekistan is anywhere near the Ukraine. But it's closer to the Ukraine than to Korea.

"Dineyra - Raqsga tushgin uzbek song" (Watch on YouTube)

Comments

[arbitrary-greay.livejournal.com]

Korean is an actual ethnic group, so being Korean isn't necessarily based on being born in Korea or having parents born in Korea. For example, Koreans live in China, and are considered an official minority group. (So they got a slot during the Chinese Ethnic Minority Arts Festival 2012 From a nationalistic standpoint, these people are Chinese, but are not "Chinese" in that they aren't Han. (This isn't a case of Koreans migrating from the peninsula into China a la America's melting pot, either. China's many, many ethnic groups were basically left untouched by the dynasties other than Qin's standardizing of measurements and the written language, taxes, and obeying the government if they came along. So ethnically Korean people have been living in China for millenia.)
So I'm thinking "non-Korean" means that you neither were born in Korea nor carry some significant fraction of the Korean ethnic group's DNA.

Gotta love the Scandinavian Music Revolution.

"How did you find out and learn about kpop?
Through Jpop forums and blogs that also covered Kpop.

"Why do you love it?
Kpop as music: Because it's not in english, so I can listen to songs in mainstream pop genres without having the experience sullied by bad lyrics.
Kpop as fandom: because I'm an idol fan, and Kpop offers an idol fandom with a more polished performance talent and image, which sometimes I crave.

"What is your ethnicity/nationality?
American, Chinese/Taiwanese heritage

"What are your favorite groups and why? What are your favorite songs and why?
In terms of "bias," I guess "favorite" group is SNSD. Although I probably favor other groups more than them currently, I'm the most invested in SNSD. But "favorite" is never a question I can answer simply because I have different answers for so many criteria, like "best" vs. "favored" vs. "approval" vs. "respected," etc. But at one point, SNSD was the top for nearly all of them.
Favorite songs depend on genre and/or "tone/mood/emotions the song evokes." Considering that I'm not actually much into Kpop music right now, ranking songs to pick a favorite will take more mental effort than I'm willing right now.

"Do you prefer boy groups over girl groups or both?
I like both, but for some reason I've never followed a boy group, even though there are some I really like and probably know about more than casual fans, I simply have never followed one the way I've followed my "bias" girlgroups.

[koganbot]

Ethnicity is a fascinating question. I'd say a group is an ethnic group if it acts like an ethnic group or if it gets treated like an ethnic group, though "acts like an ethnic group" and "gets treated like an ethnic group" aren't self-explanatory terms. Jews in Poland in the 1930s were clearly an ethnic group, but Jews in Germany or in Austria or Italy weren't so clearly an ethnic group. (And the Nazis treated them as a racial group, which is a somewhat different concept. A Christian with four Jewish grandparents was marked for extermination.) Anyway, I won't argue with the notion that "Korean" is an ethnic group; but if we ask the question, "How did you find out and learn about kpop?," it's not obvious that "Because my ethnicity is Korean" or "Because I have a certain percentage of Korean DNA" actually answers the question.

Things are in such flux, but we don't know where the flux will lead. San Francisco, where I lived in the '80s and '90s, used to have sections of town that were identified as Irish and Italian, but it doesn't anymore. It does have a Chinatown, and concentrations of Southeast Asians in the Tenderloin. And it has a very noticeable gay neighborhood. And I'd say that, back in the '70s when I was in New York, in the East Village, along with the blacks and Hispanics and what was left of the old Jews and Poles and Ukrainians etc., there was a noticeable social group that didn't have a specific name ("bohemian" or "freak" or "punk" are too narrow to encompass the group), but was distinct, was as distant from the old eastern Europeans as the blacks and Hispanics were. Not that it makes sense to call gays and bohemians ethnicities. But I'm wondering — I hardly know — to what extent such groups will in the future supersede previous social groups.

I've never seen any mention of f(x)'s Amber's ethnicity on a YouTube comment thread, though maybe the comments not in English tell a different story. The issue of her "boyish" look drowns out everything else. Not that that one example necessarily proves anything. I'm just playing with ideas.

[arbitrary-greay.livejournal.com]

I think the purpose of the survey to specify non-Koreans is to try and discover why people who may not be culturally inclined to be exposed to Kpop, nonetheless find and enjoy it. At least in America, this isn't very effective, as American-born Asians tend to group together and share cultural interests, so many Chinese/Taiwanese/Japanese/Malaysian heritage Americans will give the same answers as Korean heritage Americans: "Due to my Eastern Asian heritage, I had an interest in/predilection for Easter Asian culture, including its pop culture."
(Interestingly, on college campuses there's a little more segregation. There are an increased number of undergraduate student immigrants, and they tend to stick to their ethnicities, so the Chinese don't hang with the Koreans, and each ethnicity has its own association, and they don't merge celebrations of Asian holidays either, etc. I believe this is partially due to language, as the Korean groups stick together speaking in Korean, the Chinese speak Chinese, while many of the American-born Asians actually choose to hang out with non-Asians instead and speak English.)

On the other hand, the two Chinese members in Morning Musume were affectionately referred to by the fandom as "the pandas." But f(x) is such an interesting group to consider concerning ethnicity, as Amber is usually not grouped with Victoria as Chinese, but rather, grouped with Korean-heritage Krystal as fellow Americans.